The University of Peradeniya, in Sri Lanka, is composed of nine undergraduate faculties of study. These faculties contain 79 departments in total. In addition, the university has two postgraduate institutions and six affiliated centres.
History
Under the pioneering work of Sir Ivor Jennings, University of Ceylon was established in 1942. At the beginning, it had only three present day faculties, namely; Faculty of Arts and Oriental Studies, Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Science. A Faculty of Law also functioned separately. Since then, five other faculties have been added to the university at different times. Latest addition is the Faculty of Allied Health Science which was established in 2005. It drew much attention of the media as well as the professionals of health sector due to circumstances regarding its establishment. Department of Law operate within the faculty of Arts.
Faculties of Study
Faculty of Agriculture
A faculty of Agriculture was established in the University of Ceylon in-order to meet the requirements of manpower for research and development of the agricultural industry in Sri Lanka. At the beginning, it functioned as the Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Science, together with departments of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science. It was only by 1973, it became a separate faculty in the University of Peradeniya. The faculty offers two undergraduate degree programs; B.Sc. in Agricultural Technology and Management and B.Sc. in Food Science and Technology. The first one is offered since 2006, replacing the traditional degree, B.Sc. in Agriculture and the latter one since 2004. Faculty of Agriculture has several sub campuses except the main campus located in Peradeniya. Agricultural Farm School is situated in Kundasale, Sri Lanka, 25 kilometers away from the faculty. Another sub campus is located in Mahailuppallama, in the North Central province of Sri Lanka. The faculty maintains two residential facilities for the students in the Mahailuppallama campus.
Departments in the Faculty of Agriculture
Department of Agricultural Biology
Department of Agricultural Economics and Business Management
Department of Agricultural Engineering
Department of Agricultural Extension
Department of Animal Science
Department of Crop Science
Department of Food Science and Technology
Department of Soil Science
Faculty of Arts
Consisting of 16 academic departments of study, several institutions and a museum, Faculty of Arts is considered to be the largest faculty in University of Peradeniya. It was established with the establishment of University of Ceylon in 1942. Initially, it functioned as faculties of Arts and Oriental Studies. It had seven departments; Classics, Economics, English, Geography, History, Oriental Languages, and Philosophy. The Department of Oriental Languages was divided in 1943 into the four separate departments of Sinhalese, Tamil, Pali and Sanskrit. Academic disciplines, Law and Arabic were added in 1945, Sociology, Education and Modern Languages in 1949, Archaeology in 1959 and Buddhist Philosophy in 1964. Latest additions are Fine Arts in 2001 and Management Studies in 2002. Student enrolment in the faculty is around 3000 at present.
Departments in the Faculty of Arts
Department of Archaeology
Department of Arabic & Islamic Civilization
Department of Classical Language
Department of Economics
Department of English & French
Department of Education
Department of Fine Arts
Department of Geography
Department of History
Department of Management
Department of Pali & Buddhist Studies
Department of Philosophy & Psychology
Department of Political Science
Department of Sinhala
Department of Sociology
Department of Tamil & Hindu
The Department of Education conducts only postgraduate programs leading to a Diploma in Education, MA and M.Phil. degrees, while all other departments of study have both undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs